Introduction: Paederus dermatitis is peculiar irritant dermatitis seen in regions with warm, tropical and subtropical regions, like India, causes significant morbidity and can be misleading in diagnosis. The study was conducted to know the clinical profile of Paederus dermatitis and to create awareness among medical practitioners about this condition. Materials & Methods: All clinically diagnosed cases of Paederus dermatitis were included in the study. Detailed history was taken and a thorough clinical examination was conducted in all the cases. Results: A total of 200 cases comprising of 124 males and 76 females were studied. Morphology of lesions was mainly linear, but zosteriform, kissing and bizarre lesions were also observed. Conclusion: Paederus dermatitis should be included in differential diagnosis while examining erythemato– vesicular lesions of sudden onset, especially on exposed body parts during rainy and post rainy season. Awareness of this condition and its clinical features among the physicians and medical practitioners will prevent misdiagnosis.

Remote sensing satellite data from 2012 to 2013 are used to fit the Chinese cities’ population distributions over the same period in order to verify the population distribution in China from a relatively objective perspective. Most scholars have used nighttime light data and vegetation indexes to fit the population distribution, but the fitting effect has not been satisfactory. In this paper, processed Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) nighttime light data, net primary productivity of vegetation (NPP), and average slope data were used to fit the population distribution from the three dimensions of economic growth, ecological environment, and topographic factors, respectively. The fitting effect was significantly improved compared with other studies (R2 values of 0.9244 and 0.9253 in 2012 and 2013, respectively). Therefore, this method provides a practical and effective way to fit the population distribution for remote cities or areas lacking census data. Furthermore, there is important practical significance for the government to formulate its population policies rationally, optimize the spatial distribution of population, and improve the ecological quality of the city.

Light is fundamental to biological systems, affecting the daily rhythms of bacteria, plants, and animals. Artificial light at night (ALAN), a ubiquitous feature of urbanization, interferes with these rhythms and has the potential to exert strong selection pressures on organisms living in urban environments. ALAN also fragments landscapes, altering the movement of animals into and out of artificially lit habitats. Although research has documented phenotypic and genetic differentiation between urban and rural organisms, ALAN has rarely been considered as a driver of evolution. We argue that the fundamental importance of light to biological systems, and the capacity for ALAN to influence multiple processes contributing to evolution, makes this an important driver of evolutionary change, one with the potential to explain broad patterns of population differentiation across urban–rural landscapes. Integrating ALAN's evolutionary potential into urban ecology is a targeted and powerful approach to understanding the capacity for life to adapt to an increasingly urbanized world.

Bats show pronounced and often‐adverse reactions to artificial illumination at night (ALAN) when commuting, roosting or foraging. ALAN also affects bat drinking activity, at least when lighting occurs over short intervals. We tested whether continuous illumination of drinking sites over 4‐h periods would lead bats to tolerate ALAN and resume drinking in the course of the night. We conducted our experiments in forest (Italy) and desert (Israel) sites to test whether in the latter habitat, where water is scarce, a greater motivation to drink might lead to less adverse bat reactions. We recorded 6853 drinking buzzes and 1647 feeding buzzes from 17 species and one species group. In the forest sites, species that hunt in open spaces or along forest edges showed little (P. pipistrellus and H. savii) or no (P. kuhlii and N. leisleri) drinking activity decrease, while those associated with forest interiors (Barbastella barbastellus, Plecotus auritus and bats in the genus Myotis) exhibited a strong negative response. In the desert sites, all studied species reduced drinking activity, yet in the desert populations of P. kuhlii we recorded stronger adverse reactions only far from human settlements. The harsh reactions that the desert bat species showed towards ALAN rule out any effect of a greater motivation to drink. Illumination had no effect on foraging by most species, except in the forest sites, where Pipistrellus kuhlii and Nyctalus leisleri increased foraging when the light was on, and in the desert sites, where Hypsugo bodenheimeri decreased foraging in such situations. The progressive human encroachment that is taking place in many world regions on both forests and especially deserts, where few sites for drinking are available, may jeopardize bat populations also through increased exposure to ALAN.

Evolutionary traps are scenarios in which animals are fooled by rapidly changing conditions into preferring poor-quality resources over those that better improve survival and reproductive success. The maladaptive attraction of aquatic insects to artificial sources of horizontally polarized light (e.g., glass buildings, asphalt roads) has become a first model system by which scientists can investigate the behavioral mechanisms that cause traps to occur. We employ this field-based system to experimentally investigate (a) in which portion(s) of the spectrum are polarizationally water-imitating reflectors attractive to nocturnal terrestrial and aquatics insects, and (b) which modern lamp types result in greater attraction in this typical kind of nocturnal polarized light pollution. We found that most aquatic taxa exhibited preferences for lamps based upon their color spectra, most having lowest preference for lamps emitting blue and red light. Yet, despite previously established preference for higher degrees of polarization of reflected light, most aquatic insect families were attracted to traps based upon their unpolarized spectrum. Chironomid midges, alone, showed a preference for the color of lamplight in both the horizontally polarized and unpolarized spectra indicating only this family has evolved to use light in this color range as a source of information to guide its nocturnal habitat selection. These results demonstrate that the color of artificial lighting can exacerbate or reduce its attractiveness to aquatic insects, but that the strength of attractiveness of nocturnal evolutionary traps, and so their demographic consequences, is primarily driven by unpolarized light pollution. This focuses management attention on limiting broad-spectrum light pollution, as well as its intentional deployment to attract insects back to natural habitats.